What we do all day 3: Shopping

Just like everybody else we shop. But shopping definitely isn't the same here - in some ways better, in others, worse.

Better:

• The French cheese thing may be a cliche but it's true. In this area, Cantal Entre-Deux, Cantal Vieux, and Auvergne Bleu are all wonderful.


• Fruit is ripe and sweet: peches, nectarines, oranges, cerises,abricots - all unchilled and in season, dripping with juice.


• Wine. Cheap. Good.


• Tinned fish: Mackerel with aromatic spices in vin blanc. If you know where to get this in Manchester, please tell me.


• Chocolatiers and Patisseries. In Tulle, there's one on every corner. All run by women who look like Juliette Binoche.


• Small, independently owned shops.


• French books shops. Cool layouts and decor. Beautiful-looking books with stylish bindings and wonderful cover pictures. Intellectual-looking bookshop owners with clever hairstyles.


• Sunday closing.

Worse:

• It costs more. Everything is much more expensive than we expected it to be. You can't buy a free range chicken for under £14. Right now, I imagine some of you saying if you think it's bad there, wait till you get home. Maybe. The exchange rate has made everything worse of course, but prices here are also rising fast. £18 for a supermarket tee shirt. Petrol is even dearer here than in the UK, which means everything else is dearer too. Oil, however is cheaper. How does that work? I thought oil and petrol were different versions of the same thing. Perhaps someone with a better scientific/economic brain than me can explain.


• Wine, like oil, also costs less. Which means having to work a lot harder not to drink more.


• No big stores. Or chain stores. This is partly because there are no cities near here. But I do miss being able to wander round M&S, John Lewis or Gap et cetera, hardly spending any money, just looking, enjoying the spectacle - what my shopaphobic indoors calls intuitive shopping - which isn't meant as a compliment. In small shops people come up to you and offer to help. You can't just idle about pretending you'd look fantastic in a caftan. You have to try stuff on and find out things about your body you'd rather not know. I didn't realise I'd miss big shops and I'm a bit embarrassed by it, but there you go. I'm here to find out about myself. I've found out I'm shallow. Can't be bad.


• Books shops have French-language books in them. This is like sitting down to a feast with your mouth stitched up. Yes, I know: learn the language! I'm trying. I'm up to La Chenille Qui Fait des Trous (French edition of The Very Hungry Caterpillar) now. Only another ten years and I'll be able to have a go at Harry Potter a l'Ecole des Sorciers. Joy.


• Sunday closing. Fine in theory. Bloody annoying when you've forgotten the salt.